How Fast Can You Go Before Getting A Speeding Ticket In Minnesota?

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re driving north on 52. The speed limit (I believe) is 65 miles per hour. How fast are you really going? You can be honest; I swear I’m not a cop.

Grand Rapids Police Department via Facebook

Typically, my cruise control will be set to either 70 or 72 miles per hour. I’ve been told that going over the speed limit by 5 miles per hour is typically OK, but anything above 10 and you’re asking for it. This is totally secondhand knowledge, but I also heard from someone who was friends with an officer whose speeding rule is "Eight and I’ll let it skate; nine and you’re mine.” So that’s why I usually cap out at 7, just to be on the safe side. Mostly because you practically need to sell a kidney if you get a ticket in the North Star State.

Why all this talk about breakin’ the law? The Twin Cities Pioneer Press just came out with a new report that analyzed hundreds of thousands of Minnesota speeding tickets over the past three years. According to the findings, only 37 speeding tickets were issued for people driving less than 5 mph over the limit. To put this in perspective, that's 37 out of 224,915 tickets. Guessing they caught those officers on a bad day. So for the most part, you’re probably OK going slightly over the limit. But here’s the kicker:

97 percent of all ticketed drivers were going faster than 10 miles per hour.

That’s because many speeders are going anywhere between 15-25 miles over the limit, which does seem pretty excessive to me. You can take a look at the findings here, but this is good info to keep in the back of your head. The best way to avoid getting a speeding ticket is to obviously, you know, not speed. But...yeah. Drive safe!